Tag Team Poker was inspired by the movie Rounders, where Matt Damon and Ed Norton partner up on poker tables to collude their way to a win. Collusion in poker is a no-no, but we thought, collusion in itself requires some skill and timing…what if we encouraged it, allowed it, and rewarded it. Tag Team Poker allows players to play in pairs, and they will be able to communicate, see each other’s cards, as well as share in any profits made in the hand. Players can partner with people they know (via Facebook or Apple’s GameCenter), or a random individual – they’ll play against other pairs, though it’s up to them to figure out how the pairs are – there is no visual indication of who your opponents are paired up with.

Tag Team Poker is team-based Texas Hold’em. Traditional poker frowns on colluding with other players, but it’s not cheating when team-play is part of the game. We think changing up solo play to team play brings a new dynamic and skill requirement to the table. Just like singles vs doubles tennis, there are many differences to the way you play. In our experience, we’ve yet to encounter a style of poker that gives players the tools to do this.

Also different from most poker apps out there, Tag Team Poker employs an “under the gun” view rather than a top-down view of the table. Even though players keep switching tables after each hand, we wanted to map the game play closer to a real life experience where you can see your opponents actions. Your opponents’ actions are mapped to their animations in real time – when they tap on their chips you would see their avatar hold their chips, and when they touch their cards you would see them peeking at their cards.

The limitations are such that you can only see the actions for the person whose turn it is, but it’s another part of the game strategy users can employ for bluffing purposes. A quick set of tools are available for partners to communicate with one another. You can tell your partner to raise the pot, or fold this hand, etc. Profits are divided between the partners equally, so it doesn’t matter whether you win, or your partner wins.

That means if your partner has a strong hand and you have a crappy one, you could choose to stay in the round to help scare off the others. As you’ll discover when you play, you wont be able to tell who’s paired up at the table. In this version of Tag Team Poker you’ll always play as one of the Good Cop duo and see everyone else as one of the other characters.

Players can connect to Facebook, Game Center and/or Google+ to play with friends, or choose Random play if real friends are unavailable to play.